Here is a homoeopathic definition of the word “SICK” that Dr. Hahnemann used in the first aphorism of organon of medicine.
You must have heard that a person leaves his body behind when he dies.
If we dissect the body, we will find only his organs, bones, muscles, tissues etc.
But everything we used to feel and sense about this person will be left behind.
A living person sees, feels, thinks and reacts.
He has likes and dislikes.
A dead body does not have these characteristics.
The mere bodily organs do not constitute a person; the person is more than organs or tissues.
In our previous post Concept of Health and Disease, it has been explained that,
A harmonious organization of entire organism results in the feeling of normal sensation and functions. This feeling of normality is known as Health.
So, disturbance in the harmonious state of mind and body causes feeling of uneasiness and discomfort which we call as an illness.
DEFINITION OF ILLNESS
Illness is a deviated state of a person’s mind or body in which he feels uneasiness, pain or discomfort.
This internal illness is expressed in the form of abnormal signs and symptoms to which we name under different disease diagnosis.
Examples: Constipation, Diabetes, Hypertension, Allergy, Psoriasis etc.
DEFINITION OF DISEASE
The word Disease is of French origin which means lack of ease or inconvenience.
Illness is an internal deviated state or disturbed harmony which is expressed in the form of abnormal signs and symptoms which we call as disease.
In other words, Disease is an expression of the illness.
Now you can understand that, organic and tissue changes are the result of illness in a person, they are not the disease.
Nothing exists without a cause.
Disease is neither something that is local nor the affection of parts. But it is the person’s state as a whole at a time.
In common language, diseases are the diagnostic labels given to the patient’s condition or symptoms.
We say,
“She has got psoriasis”.
“He is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease”.
“She has been through renal affections”.
But the problem is, if we have material ideas of the disease, we will have only material solutions of cure.
If we think that an organ is sick and it alone causes the disease, we must feel that we can cure the patient by removing the organ.
DEFINITION OF SICK
Sick is a person who is affected by mental or physical illness.
Think of a man with necrotic condition of foot and we believe that the foot is sick, we would cure the patient by removing his foot.
Remember that, tissues or organs could not become sick unless something had been disturbed prior to them.
So, state comes first which is the real sickness of an individual patient. This diseased state needs to be treated, not only the local parts of body.
Those bodily parts will function normally once the previous healthy state is restored.
Let me put this in another way, if we treat only the local parts, the disease will be relieved for the time being. It may return with more severity or may progress to become incurable one.
This is the reason that totality of the symptoms with individualistic approach is an important part of homoeopathic case taking.
CONCLUSION
Sick is an individual suffering from a cascade of events that remain unnoticed before outward manifestation in the form of abnormal signs and symptoms.
Sick is a person who needs to be treated homoeopathically.
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